The aim of this paper is to provide a complete Natural Kind Semantics for an Essentialist Theory of Kinds. The theory is formulated in two-sorted first order monadic modal logic with identity. The natural kind semantics is based on Rudolf Willes Theory of Concept Lattices. The semantics is then used to explain several consequences of the theory, including results about the specificity (species–genus) relations between kinds, the definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences and the existence of (...) negative kinds. First, I show under which conditions the Hierarchy principle, which has been subjected to counterexamples in the literature, holds. I also show that a different principle about the species–genus relations between kinds, namely Kant’s Law, follows from the essentialist theory. Second, I introduce two new operations for kinds and show that they can be used to provide traditional definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences. Finally, I show that these operations of specific difference induce, for each kind, a uniquely specified contrary kind and a uniquely specified subcontrary kind, which can be used as semantic values for non-classical predicate negations of kind terms. (shrink)

Philosophers of the modern period are often presented as having made an elementary error: that of confounding the attitude one adopts toward a proposition with its content. By examining the works of Locke and the Port-Royalians, I show that this accusation is ill-founded and that Locke, in particular, has the resources to construct a theory of propositional attitudes.

One striking contrast that Kant draws between the kind of cognitive capacities that humans have and alternative kinds of intellect concerns modal concepts. Whilst , the very distinction between possibility and actuality would not arise for an intuitive understanding. The aim of this paper is to explore in more detail how the functioning of these cognitive capacities relates to modal concepts, and to provide a model of the intuitive understanding, in order to draw some general lessons for our ability to (...) make modal judgements, and the function of such judgements. (shrink)

Hegel's empty formalism charge is taken, virtually without exception, as a serious objection to Kant's categorical imperative and a powerful refutation of his formalist ethics. The dominant interpretation is represented by Bradley, Paton, Mill, Korsgaard, Guyer, Wood, Schneewind, Sedgwick, more recently, Freyenhagen, and others. So far, the dominant interpretation has remained powerfully influential and virtually unchallenged.However, the dominant interpretation tends to take Hegel's empty formalism in isolation from other texts in the corpus, his holistic system, and dialectical method in general. (...) What makes this non-contextualised approach problematic is that it ignores his remarks on formalism in other texts where his use of dialectical and sceptical method is more in evidence. Hegel's emptiness remarks span his entire career, from their appearance in Jena right up to the end of his career in Berlin. In Jena, his views on formal thinking in a logical sense developed alongside his views on formalism in ethics. Prima facie, the arguments bring together two subject matters that seem to have nothing to do with one another. This may explain why no one has given an interpretation that brings the two domains together. But it is worth noting that Kant himself brings logical considerations to bear on his conception of the moral principle. His distinction between the form of a moral principle and its empirical content recalls his characterisation of logical laws in the firstCritique. (shrink)

In his book Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos, Peter E. Gordon attempts to reconstruct the historical circumstances which shaped Martin Heidegger’s and Ernst Cassirer’s debate at Davos in 1929, as well as outline the key points of contention in their arguments. Gordon argues that the primary source of disagreement between Heidegger and Cassirer lies in their different concepts of what it means to be human. In this review essay, I argue that rather than a “conceptual” or “thematic” divide, the divergence (...) between them is primarily methodological, and, in Heidegger’s case, unfolds on two fronts: first, by shifting the focus of philosophy away from the modern concern for “man” in favor of the question of being, and, secondly, by pioneering a new strategy for reading the history of philosophy that emphasizes the “historical [geschichtlich]” as the recovery of the past in terms of its relevance for the future, versus providing a “historically [historisch]” accurate record of what has been. (shrink)

This article presents a new argument concerning the relation between Kant’s theory of race and aspects of the critical philosophy. It argues that Kant’s treatment of the problem of the systematic unity of nature and knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment can be traced back a methodological problem in the natural history of the period – that of the possibility of a natural system of nature. Kant’s transformation of the methodological problem (...) from natural history into a set of philosophical problems proceeds by way of the working out of his own problem in natural history – the problem of the natural history of the human races – and specifically the problem of the unity in diversity of the human species, in response to which he develops a theory of race. This theory of race is, further, the first developed model of the use of teleological judgment in Kant’s work. The article thus argues that Kant’s philosophical position on the sy... (shrink)

While typically unapologetic in expressing admiration, notably Gilles Deleuze admits his concern one time, in passing, that Gilbert Simondon's thought might hide a pernicious kind of ‘disguised moralism’, in which the form of the transcendent lurks, the enemy of the philosophy of immanence. Might there in fact be an ulterior motive in Deleuze's concern? But might this potential critique invite its own reversal? That is, might Deleuze's accusation be in fact a strategy for teasing out what, perhaps, is unrecognisable as (...) such, but structurally essential for how Simondon constructs his onto-epistemological goals? Moreover, might this Simondonian response, unmasked, not only deflect but anticipate a ‘critique’ like Deleuze's? Extending this question further reveals I believe the implications for Simondon's ‘ethics without morality’, bringing him closer to Deleuze's interpretation of Spinoza. As a result, Deleuze's ‘critique’ invites the question: ‘What exactly is Spinozan in Simondon's ethics?’ Such a question compels our re-evaluation of humanism, its underlying prerogatives, if now in light of its consequences, the re-evaluation of poststructuralism: first, because it is predicated on the critique of the humanistic subject and, second, because ‘poststructuralism’ has come to designate how Simondon's relatedness is determined to Deleuze. (shrink)

Proceedings of the 2016 "one word" colloquium of the The Philosophical Society of Finland. The word was "Possibility".

RÉSUMÉ: Les philosophes de la période moderne sont souvent présentés comme ayant commis une erreur élémentaire: celle de confondre la force propositionnelle avec le contenu propositionnel. Par l'examen de deux cas saillants, à savoir les philosophes de Port-Royal et John Locke, je montre que l'accusation n'est pas fondée, et que Locke en particulier a les ressources requises pour construire une théorie des attitudes propositionnelles.

En un pasaje famoso, Kant dijo que "los pensamientos sin contenido son vacíos, las intuiciones sin conceptos son ciegas", lo cual ha dado lugar -de la mano de filósofos y exégetas clásicos y contemporáneos como McDowell- a la idea de que los estados mentales que Kant denomina intuiciones poseen ya un contenido conceptual. En este artículo se propone una lectura que hace énfasis en la independencia o separabilidad de intuiciones y conceptos, y cómo las primeras constituyen un tipo de cognición (...) que, sin ser conceptual, es suficiente para la individuación de particulares. In a famous passage, Kant said that "the thoughts without content are empties, the intuitions without concepts are blind", which has given place, from the hand of classical and contemporaries philosophers and scholars, like McDowell, to the idea that the mental states which Kant calls intuitions have conceptual content. This article proposes a lecture that makes emphasis on independence or separability between intuitions and concepts, and how the firsts constitutes a kind of cognition that while is non-conceptual, is enough for the individuation of particulars. (shrink)

In this paper I explicate a technique which can be used to make subtle relational features of experience more evident to awareness. Results of this method could be employed to diffuse one intuition that drives the common critique of functionalist-information theoretic accounts of mind that "qualia" cannot be exhaustively characterized in information theoretic-functional terms. An intuition that commonly grounds this critique is that the qualitative aspects of experience do not entirely appear in consciousness as informational-functional structures. The first section of (...) the paper is a schematic overview of nature of the qualitative and the problem that qualia are taken to create for information theoretic-functionalist theories of mind. §2 contains a précis of the concept of different levels of functional scale in mental activity that was developed by Armstrong and the Churchlands and that is needed to interpret (possible) results of the proposed experiment. In §3, I outline a method whereby analogies would be generated between purely relational forms, structures, configurations, etc. and purely qualitative aspects of experience. These analogies would be created by subjects through forced choice selection of presented images of structures that "most resembled" a pure quality. Repeated choices would then be shaped by a genetic program into the structural configuration that "most resembled" the pure quality. The final section of the paper explores how consistent, reliable results from the experiment would make information-theoretic functionalism more intuitively plausible in spite of the "fact" that the qualitative aspects of experience do not immediately appear as entirely relational/structural. (shrink)

Performance philosophy commences with an impertinent gesture when it describes itself as inaugurating a ‘new field’ of study. Accompanying that claim is a radical proposition that ‘performance thinks’; that it should be counted as a form of philosophising in its own right. But in what sense can performance be construed as ‘genuinely’ philosophical thought? Taking my cue from Laura Cull’s alignment of performance philosophy with Laruelle’s practice of ‘non philosophy’ – and specifically, with its introduction of ‘democracy’ into the dispositives (...) of ‘standard’ philosophy in order to challenge its transcendental authority over the Real – I argue that performance philosophy might be seen to enact a similar disruption of the ‘dispositives’ of performance theory. This, however, is only partly what is at stake in the fundamental proposition of performance philosophy, and I conclude by suggesting that a more radical proposal lies behind its assertion of a new ‘field’ – one that does not reduce it to an empirical fact, but grasps it as a radical ‘utopian’ hypothesis designed to ‘open up’ the philosophical dimension of performance itself; utopian because what performance offers – seen in this way - is not simply another system of representation but a possible democratic thought of the Real itself. (shrink)